First YouTube now Google being banned in Turkey

First YouTube now Google being banned in Turkey(nationalturk.com)

47 points by erhanerdogan 16 years ago | 10 comments

mindcreek 16 years ago |

The main problem here is not the offending video or else, the main problem is there is a monopoly in Turkish internet backbone and youtube users in Turkey use half of the total bandwidth , They dont want to improve their backbone so they are covering their behinds by banning the site with the most traffic. It's not about politics it's about money :)

And believe me I know this is my job.

utoku 16 years ago | |

If you are indeed an ISP as your profile says, your job would be to reroute the wrongly banned traffic so that it does not get dropped by Turk Telekom. Advertise it here, and I would switch to your services. The law doesn't prevent you from laying the cable.

fsniper 16 years ago | |

This is utterly ridiculous. But in the same time you have a bit right here. First of all, these blockages are ordered by a law no 5651. They are mostly ordered and applied by judges via isps. Some of the blockages are not based on judge jurisdiction but by government organisation telecommunication and communication precidency. Ridiculous thing is they are full ip based level 3 or level 7 dns-ip diversion blockages. So by blocking a ip blocks they are also blocking "innocent by law" applications or sites. Virtual hosting like same ip different applications are not considered by law or by isp's. (well main isp responsible is Turk Telecom Net cause they have internet monopoly in Turkey). The thing you are right is they have accidentally the whole internet! By blocking google ips. And I do not believe TTnet has this much idiot engineers or admins. They sure have some background agenda by making these "mistakes"

utoku 16 years ago | |

I understand that you are implying, that as an ISP owner you have received no instructions from the government to further impose IP level restrictions on YouTube. That is how you would know.

Now, as an ISP owner, if you only use Turk Telekom (current "Ma Bell" of Turkey) as your backbone, then you also did nothing to improve your own backbone. Then you would also be guilty of the same flaw you mentioned.

But on the off chance that you actually do have your own fast backbone and the most likely chance that there are no restrictions on Google's sites other than YouTube... Today is the day, you should be advertising, by word of mouth, by _anything_ that how we can reach all the sites if we use your ISP.

If not, it is not really _your_ job.

Jun8 16 years ago | |

I completely agree. The sad fact is while countries like India built great Internet infrastucture in the past, Turkey has lagged in this regard. Many users and companies have to live with a slow connection. Sudden connection failures are not uncommon. This is one major reason why Turkey's Internet-based business has lagged greatly behind, compared to other sectors (the other major one being that there is no reliable, cheap postal service in Turkey, like in the US).

utoku 16 years ago |

There is a tension before something breaks or action happens (spannungsbogen?). So I am glad that this is a major fuckup, with possible commercial backlash.

The previous YouTube ban was a DNS deletion from the Turkish DNSes. This was naturally avoided by people using Google's DNS anyway. Most people I know either use Google's DNS or some other open dns even if somebody set it up for them and they don't know about it.

And now there is a "deny all Google IPs, allow search and few other things like Maps, Reader and Picasa" ban across all Google domains.

This is funny and quite serious at the same time.

Ah, it cannot possibly have an effect on me, I think. I pay for servers in UK, Germany and USA. I can reroute myself however I want. But what about my friends... This is not a ban they can avoid easily. Oh wait... Check out my Nexus One. Bingo, all those sites don't mention it, but now I cannot enter Android Market or use any of Google's apps. The thing is almost bricked.

This is why things like Cynogenmod are a "Good Thing (TM)". Hey, YouTube on the Android works, which is most probably what the ban is trying to nuke. Ironic as always.

The reason is probably the way Google handles DNS and how it tricked the censors into banning everything while they were trying to "actually" ban YouTube IP block.

Now you got companies that are complaining because they cannot get into their docs.google.com. Most sites have their loading spinners stuck on spinning because you cannot reach analytics. Guess what, Google isn't just providing search anymore.

It maybe that it is time to react for most people now. The People. Oh wait, that includes me. Hmmmmmm.....

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/blackboard/benn-l.htm

ocanbascil 16 years ago |

I live in Turkey and there's an online rumor about how the prime minister orchestrated this ban as some people were talking about his exploits in google groups etc. I can't tell if this is the real reason for the ban, but I can affirm you that if you want to have a time travel to the past (dark ages) you can visit Turkey anytime you want.

Jun8 16 years ago | |

These are unvalidated rumours, as you point out.

jrockway 16 years ago |

"Dear Internet Service Provider: I ordered an Internet connection, but all I got was this. Please refund me in full."

hackermom 16 years ago |

This looks to me like something I never thought would happen; it's one step worse than the usual proceedings of network expansion by "dumb-greedy" suits in charge at ISPs - just lay one cheap channel of copper, don't spend extra on fiber, then dig the lane up again when bandwidth is short and put another channel of cheap copper, then dig up again, and again, instead of just laying down fiber from the start and be done with it for years ahead for one tenth the cost of digging the lane up - but instead, these brilliant suits cut all their costs by just selectively choking the web infront of their customers. What an utterly backwards, bone-headed move.